Startup Turns "Unrecyclable" Plastic Into Giant, Indestructible Construction Bricks

This sounds mildly ingenious.

Block Heads

What if we told you that you could construct entire buildings out of trashed plastic bags and water bottles?

That future may be closer than you think, thanks to new tech from ByFusion Global, an LA-based startup that's developed a way for governments, companies, and communities to recycle previously "unrecyclable plastics" into huge, virtually indestructible bricks.

Known as "ByBlocks," the cinderblockish bricks are made using a steam-based compacting method that, per ByFusion's website, "does not require any chemicals, additives, adhesives, or fillers." The lego-like bricks made by the ByFusion process are said to be construction-grade and indestructible.

 

Plastic Urgency

In an interview with Waste360, ByFusion CEO Heidi Kujawa said that the company received a Dow grant and has partnered with the Hefty trash bag company's EnergyBag recycling program to run a pilot program in Boise, Idaho that will give the community access to the Blocker system.

Along with providing the tech, the pilot program is slated to help Boise residents divert up to 72 tons of otherwise unrecyclable plastics from the local landfill and has already used the blocks to build a bench in a city park, with more planned structures set to built in the coming years.

Though there's certainly room for criticism of the startup's partnership with a company that manufactures plastic bags and an organization integral to the not-so-green financial industry, there's no harm in ByFusion taking their money.

And one thing's for sure: whoever figures out a way to implement this kind of system on a mass scale deserves the Nobel Prize.

READ MORE: Hard-To-Recycle Plastics Are Now Being Made Into Zero Waste “Concrete” Blocks [Apartment Therapy]

More plastic evil: Researchers Find Microplastics Inside Newborn Babies